Our book group choice for March 2026 is TonyInterruptor by Nicola Barker. In a dimly lit Canterbury jazz club, trumpeter Sasha Keyes is deep in a fearless improvisational solo when the unthinkable happens: a middle-aged man stands up and politely asks, “Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?”
This single, destabilising query—dubbed the “First Interruption”—is captured on a smartphone by bored teenager India Shore. When the video goes viral, the man is christened #TonyInterruptor, a memeified folk hero (or villain) whose unquenchable urge to disrupt live cultural events challenges the very social contract of art.
Nicola Barker’s 2025 novel is a dizzying, maximalist exploration of the fallout. The narrative radiates outwards from that one moment, dragging a cast of eccentric, interconnected characters into its wake:
- Sasha Keyes: The musician whose artistic integrity is wounded by the suggestion of artifice.
- Lambert Shore: India’s father, a po-faced architecture professor who becomes obsessed with the intellectual implications of the heckle.
- Fi Kinebuchi: The “Queen of Strings” and Sasha’s bandmate, whose own insecurities about performance are laid bare by the digital storm.
- John Lincoln Braithwaite: The eponymous “Tony,” a man who despises algorithms and seeks a “revelation” through the clumsy, human friction of the unexpected.
Barker utilises her signature manic prose — rife with digressions, ellipses, and sharp comedic asides — to skewer 21st-century pretension. As the story jumps forward three years, it evolves from a satire on “cancel culture” into a profound meditation on the “Buddhist Lineage of Mis-steps,” suggesting that our failings and interruptions are more authentic than our curated successes.
Discussion Questions
To come
Individual Ratings
Individual's Rating 